Samsung announces winners of Global Startup Acceleration Program

The program was done by Samsung in partnership with the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) to mentor startups in varied fieldsETtech | August 12, 2018, 17:00 IST

Samsung Electronics, which recently held its Global Startup Acceleration Program in Bengaluru, has announced three winners.

The program, which was done in partnership with the International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) to mentor startups in varied fields, is a part of a global program being held across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, South Africa between July and September with 80 selected startups.

Among winners across four countries, a final five will be invited to Samsung headquarters in Korea.

The competition's winners from India include Hexpressions, that offers affordable, ready to assemble homes made out of Composite Paper Honeycomb panels; Ziroh Labs that works in the area of privacy engineering and runtime encryption of data; and Olly Credit, a mobile micro credit cards for millennial. The winners received Rs 2,00,000, Rs 1,50,000 and Rs 1,00,000 respectively

Around 30 employees from Samsung’s global headquarters and five university students from Korea have been mentoring the 20 shortlisted startups remotely for two months as part of the Samsung Employee Volunteer Program.

Starting from 6 August, the startups and their assigned mentors came together for a five-day bootcamp at IIIT-B. This was followed by pitching sessions over the next few days.

Social enterprise Geriatric Care Network, which provides preventive and wellness focused healthcare solutions for the elderly, and BrownPacket, a mobile app for hyperlocal medicines and wellness products delivery, won the Best Improvement Award for showing the most improvement through the two month mentoring process.

The Best Social Impact Award was given to Avidia Labs that offers immersive learning experiences for schools using augmented reality and virtual reality.

"With the Global Startup Acceleration Program, our experts and engineers from different domains are volunteering to support the sustainable growth of local entrepreneurs in the early stage,” said Aloknath De, Chief Technology Officer, Samsung R&D Institute.

In India, IIIT- B invited applications from startups for the Global Startup Acceleration Program starting May. Of the applications that were received, Samsung Electronics and IIIT-B shortlisted 20 startups.

As part of its corporate social responsibility, Samsung R&D Institute, Bengaluru (SRI-B) signed a MoU with IIIT-B under which three startups will get extended support from the local incubation center at IIIT-B for the next 24 months.